maiakobabe's profile picture

maiakobabe 's review for:

The Times I Knew I Was Gay by Eleanor Crewes
4.0

This reads like a series of diary excerpts mixed with sketchbook pages. One of my favorite sections tells of Crewes's teenage love for the character of Willow from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which somehow did not tip her off to the fact she was gay, though maybe it should have. Crewes describes the self-knowledge of her own queerness as a secret envelope that she gave to herself, a message that took her a long time to open. She came out once in the high of a good New Year's party to friends, but then retreated from it. When she finally got to the place of fully accepting herself, it made so many things fall into place. I really liked the art, which is loose and sketchy, though I almost wished the book were longer, or that a bit more had been pack into it's pages.